Report details Maxine Waters ethics case debacle

The long saga of the Maxine Waters ethics investigation is a chronicle of mistakes, partisan and intraparty squabbles, allegations of racism, bitter personal rivalries and failed attempts to bring the investigation to a close months and even years before it ended.

The Ethics Committee’s probe of the California congresswoman’s dealings with a minority-owned bank in which her husband held stock dragged on 38 months and consumed probably millions in legal fees — far more than the roughly $350,000 investment that Waters’s husband, Sidney Williams, was in danger of losing if OneUnited Bank collapsed during the 2008 U.S. financial crisis.

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In the end, Waters emerged unscathed. The only person found to have committed any wrongdoing was her top aide.

On Tuesday, the House Ethics Committee issued its final report in the case. Waters will not be charged with any violations of House ethics rules. That decision is a big win for the California Democrat and clears the way for her to seek the ranking member post on the Financial Services Committee next year.

Her chief of staff, Mikael Moore, was issued a letter of reproval from the Ethics Committee. The committee ruled that Moore knew “or should have known” of Waters’s financial ties to OneUnited, and should have followed his boss’s direction not to help the bank even after top OneUnited officials turned to Waters — a political ally — for help.

Moore was charged with three ethics violations, but since the letter of reproval is the lightest sanction that can be imposed by the Ethics Committee, it has no immediate impact on his position in Waters’s office.

“Your actions on behalf of OneUnited Bank’s private efforts to obtain assistance and avoid collapse created dramatic appearances of conflict with your employing Member’s personal financial interests,” Reps. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), the acting chairman and ranking member of the Ethics Committee, wrote in their letter to Moore. “Your actions blurred an already difficult and close line of permissible conduct due to OneUnited’s prominent role in responding to a significant crisis affecting unknown number of banks.”

Waters declined to comment on the Ethics Committee report or the letter of reproval against Moore.

But Goodlatte and Yarmuth also issued a surprising number of recommendations for both lawmakers and the Ethics Committee going forward, stemming directly from the problems that arose during the Waters probe.

Goodlatte and Yarmuth were brought in to handle the case after six members of the secretive panel, including all five Republicans, recused themselves — an unprecedented move in the 45-year history of the Ethics Committee. They urged members to ensure they act in a nonpartisan manner when selected for the unpopular ethics duty. Committee staff should do the same, they said.

Goodlatte and Yarmuth also asked House leaders to pass new rules spelling out what constitutes a personal conflict of interest for lawmakers and aides when dealing with issues that affect a member’s own finances.

In addition, they said House rules should be revised so lawmakers cannot hire their grandchildren. Moore is Waters’s grandson.

Booth Moore and Waters denied wrongdoing throughout the seemingly endless probe. In an extraordinary appearance before Ethics Committee members Friday, Moore noted that the outside counsel hired to get the panel out of its Waters-related quagmire did not find “clear and convincing evidence” that he had broken any rules.

However, the 10-member panel ignored Moore’s arguments and voted unanimously to issue the letter of reproval.

* Martin found that at least one Ethic Committee staffer “made racially insensitive and inappropriate comments” about Waters and the case against her, although he said it did not impact the final verdict.

==== Too much childishness and partisanship in Congress. If only we could replace the entire lot at once but most of them keep winning their primaries. And this Congress only got much much worse after 2010.

....everyone involved in the debacle should be run out of town never to hold office again.

Yep, Pelosi, who was speaker of the House for the first 24 months of this Kangaroo Show systematically entered Corrupt Liberal Political Antics into this investigation all at the same time Rangel was going through his actions.

Thanks to her shenanigans Rangel won reelection in Harlem, and her California Colleague will probly win again in that UberLib district.

I guess all that remains is... Who gets stuck with the bill... the Aide?

You know damn well it wont be Maxine, or her husband.

How 'bout it Libs, are you really OK with sticking the patsy aide with Maxines/husbands stupidity, or are you gonna figure out a way to make sure the tax payers take the hit for the Liberal Lawyers bill?

Uh, Why is this loud, racist liberal woman fraud not behind bars where she belongs? She, like Rangel, are guilty of faurd - and like most Obamabots who cheated at the polls to win --are dirty to the core!

The climate does not exist in which a crooked black politician will ever be called to account, much less pay for, any of the myriad of crimes committed by the likes of MAD MAXINE,Sharpton, Marion Berry, or an of the other professional negroes! When the race war breaks out in this country it will not be the result of oppression of blacks it will be the result of a white population having grown inescapably furious at the long standing double standard that has excused black crime against others under the guise of combating racism. Blacks have prostituted themselves and sentenced their antecedents to a permanent place at the bottom of the social ladder because they have not held themselves to standards that decent folks of every other color have self-imposed.

So their story is that the aide, who had no money invested in the bank, is the one responsible for getting them bailed out even though Water's husband was invested in the bank and the bank asked Waters, and not her aide, for help?

Must be nice being sheilded from all wrong doing by your friends in office. The mere fact that Dems kept this going for three years when it could have been investigated and settled in six months is a joke. Anyone in office more then six years should be fired and banned from ever serving in any government office ever again.

"With compartmentalization and plenty of plausible deniability the elected official skirted all the rules. Good show!"

"In other words, she is still corrupt, but the investigation team is inept".

"Uh, Why is this loud, racist liberal woman fraud not behind bars where she belongs?"

"Evil racist Maxine needs to do Americans a huge favors and walk in front of a fast moving bus."

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This woman was subjected to a long investigation, and when the committee couldn't get the job done, an independent investigator found her INNOCENT of the charges. You are letting your personal biases get in the way of the facts of this case. Waters was found innocent of the accusations against her. Grow up and deal with it.